McAuliffe aims to break Va. trend

Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe celebrated his 56th birthday Saturday by opening his first field office in Rosslyn.

The former Democratic National Committee chairman and businessman met supporters, spoke about his reasons for running and laid out some contrasts between himself and his Republican opponent, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

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In a speech to a crowd of about 250, McAuliffe noted the long-standing pattern in which the party that loses the White House one year wins the Virginia governorship the next year. He said this November would be a “watershed” election that could break the trend.

“We know history: whoever wins the White House, the other party’s won the governor’s mansion for 40 straight years,” he said. “But you know what? If I’d have said 10 years ago that Barack Obama would win Virginia twice in a row … he did it and we’re going to do it, too.”

He said the biggest challenge will be getting the Democratic voters who turned out for Obama in November to go to the polls again in 2013.

“We’ve got to get the numbers up, traditionally after a presidential year,” he said. “We’ve got to get those federal voters out in a non-federal year.”

In encouraging his supporters to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot, McAuliffe used the opportunity to indirectly criticize Cuccinelli’s tenure as attorney general.

“We need a good attorney general, because we know what happens when we have an attorney general who’s more interested in suing scientists and all this other stuff instead of focusing on the job at hand,” he said. “So it’s important for us to have a real attorney general who’s focused on the people’s business and not some social ideological agenda which is going to divide us.”

He also used the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare as a point of comparison between himself and Cuccinelli.

“There’s going to be a real difference between the two of us: he is against the Medicaid expansion, I’m all in for the Medicaid expansion,” he said. “Think about this for a second: We will be able to cover four to five hundred thousand more Virginians with quality health care.”

There’s been little polling on the race at this point, but a Public Policy Polling survey from early January showed McAuliffe with a 5-point lead over Cuccinelli, 46 percent to 41 percent.

The candidate, who lost a race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2009, called that campaign a “great experience.”

“The day after that election, I got myself up just like every Virginian does, I dusted myself off and said, ‘What a great experience,’” he said. “I got to listen to folks. I was in their kitchens, their living rooms, talking and listening to people, that’s where I got the greatest ideas.”